A ten-year-old boy was killed and dozens injured after Russian strikes hit multiple Ukrainian cities overnight into Tuesday, ahead of talks between the two countries scheduled for Wednesday.
In the early hours of Tuesday morning, a Russian FAB-250 aerial bomb struck a residential apartment building in Kramatorsk. The strike killed a 10-year-old boy, and injured at least eight civilians.
Additional Russian drones damaged garages, houses, vehicles and an industrial area in the wider Donetsk region, hitting at least nine settlements overall in the barrage.
Apartment buildings, a kindergarten, private garages, cars, and parts of an industrial zone were also damaged.
The Black Sea port city of Odesa was targeted by more than ten drones overnight, according to the Southern Air Command. The strike damaged civilian infrastructure, including administrative building, vehicles and public facilities.
In one impacted district, several cars caught fire in a parking lot near a multi-storey building which saw its windows blown out due to the blast.
More than 30 cars were damaged in the attack, as well as a building housing a gym. The gym's owner, Ivan, said not a single window had survived the blast.
"The security guard who was in the gazebo near the blast site is safe and unharmed. My cat has lived here since the beginning — he was rescued around 3 am, there was smoke, but they carried him out. I’m glad he's alive and no one was hurt — that's the most important thing. Everything else we'll rebuild and keep working," Ivan said.
State Emergency Services in the Odesa region said that a 41-year-old woman sustained a head injury in the blast and was later hospitalised.
In the north-eastern city of Sumy, a strike hit residential buildings and vehicles, injuring at least twelve people.
The most severe damage in the city was reported at an apartment building on Peremohy Avenue, where five apartment blocks and 18 vehicles were damaged according to the Ukrainian State Emergency Services.
A humanitarian NGO operating near the building stepped in to help residents, providing psychological support and advice for claiming property damage compensation.
The Russian strikes come after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced in his evening address on Monday that there would be another round of talks between Russia and Ukraine on Wednesday.
Two previous rounds of negotiations between Russia and Ukraine have resulted in large scale prisoner swaps, but little concrete progress on ending the war.
US President Donald Trump has been putting further pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has evaded agreeing to a US-backed ceasefire proposal and continued to ramp up long-range attacks on Ukrainian towns and cities.
